Category Archives: US vs USA

Today, The Washington Examiner published an article entitled “Kerry: U.N. has the right to vote on Iran deal before Congress.” The article focused on the recent preliminary agreement between Iran and the U.S. on the subject of nuclear weapons for Iran.

Including the headline, the article has 260 words. The word “deal” appeared five times. The word “treaty” didn’t appear even once.

Of course, The Washington Examiner article was not a Supreme Court decision. We can’t assume that the article’s word choices reflect the actual law and relies on legal terms. Still, it’s odd that the article repeatedly describes this agreement between the nations of Iran and the U.S. as a “deal” but never once called it a “treaty”.

Shouldn’t we expect that an agreement between two nations would be called a “treaty”?

Subsection (c) of Rule 101 (“Title and Scope”) of the Texas Rules of Evidence reads as follows:

“(c) Hierarchical Governance in Criminal Proceedings. –Hierarchical governance shall be in the following order: the Constitution of the United States, those federal statutes that control states under the supremacy clause, the Constitution of Texas, the Code of Criminal Procedureand the Penal Code, civil statutes, these rules, and the common law. Where possible, inconsistency is to be removed by reasonable construction.”